Dear Acton Familia;
This letter was written for YOU - inspired not only by Acton, but by Alex Kotran at AiEDU and their series on “Preparing kids for careers in an AI world” (look it up on YouTube). What you are reading is the second in a series of “love letters” that are being written and sent to our community of families - because we love you. Please pass it along to other like-minds because we will invite other families like you to join us on this adventure!
TOPIC: A Letter For This Holiday Season… And For Many Seasons To Come
The world our children will live in is going to look VERY different from the one we know today. AI is real and the coming changes will disrupt what we think we know about jobs and starting a career. It is already happening.
But every industrial revolution has created more jobs than it destroyed. The key is being on the right side of those changes. The old playbook (ie, picking a ‘safe’ major, following predictable paths) is dead. In fact, trying to do ‘what you should do’ is likely to be disastrous.
Instead, the only SAFE path is to do three things (suggested by Alex AND they happen to be the three things that we focus on MOST at Acton. Worth noting they happen the LEAST in the factory schools):
- Learn to do hard things. Ask any of our learners and they will practically recite “Heroes do hard things” because they have heard it so many times. It doesn’t matter so much what things you pick. What matters is you commit, struggle through set-backs, persist, show grit, and… deliver. We practice this every day, more than anything else we do. So on the ride home today, ask your learners what hard things they tackled. And what they will do next.
- Become a master at learning. Not only is everything we (being parents makes us fossils) learned in school available at click of the button, but that same knowledge is expiring faster than ever. The only advantage is the ability to learn continuously. Learn new things. On your own. Without an instructor or someone telling you what to do. Get really good at this, because the gap between what we do at Acton and those being ‘taught’ is widening each day.
- Figure out how to deal with people. AI will never be able to navigate the friction of real human relationships. As more and more routine work gets automated, this skill (what they call the ‘soft skills’) will become more and more valuable. It has already started as many employers are hiring non-grads over University grads IF they can demonstrate the soft skills that make or break employment.
Notice that NOWHERE above did I use the word ‘entrepreneur’ or mention ‘starting a business’. We just finished our Children’s Business Fair and some folks mistakenly think we are ONLY advocating that one path forward to prepare for the coming world of AI.
What we are REALLY championing, is that 100% of our learners will explore and pursue what genuinely interests them, they will build a capacity to adapt, they will learn to think for themselves, and they will do it over and over again in their time at Acton.
Those repetitions build confidence. Now. And just like they say the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, the time to get ready for this coming tsunami of change is… NOW.
So the next time one of your friends talk about “getting ready to get into a good high school, or a good university… to get a good job… to live a cushy life” please speak up.
Let them know that at Acton we are DOING HARD THINGS on… and with purpose. We are embracing the struggle. We are chasing excellence AND letting our learners understand what that means at a DEEP LEVEL (not being told by someone else).
Speak up for your friends (the other families you care about). And for your children, you might share this:
“When I was your age we didn’t have social media, we didn’t have TikTok. Reels were actually big circles of real film strip. No one ever heard of doomscrolling. And compared today, politics was practically a love-fest.
The adults in my day seemed to have things figured out. And they kind of left us alone to figure things out on our own, to learn what it means to be an adult - the difficulties of the real world. The hardest question we all had to face was “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Today, it no longer feels like most adults have it together. And anyone who tells you the job market is going to look like is probably lying or trying to sell you something. The truth is, no one knows and you most likely will end up doing a job that hasn’t even been invented yet.
So this year (and for years to come) you are getting a gift that will keep on giving for your lifetime. You have hit the “generational lottery” because there have only been three other moments like this in the history of human civilization. The steam engine. Electricity. The computer. And now AI.
The ‘AI revolution’ will liberate you from having to know exactly what you want to be when you grow up.
Now the only thing you have to focus on is something way more fundamental: your ability to do hard challenges; to keep learning as things change; and to work effectively with other people.
You don’t need to predict the future to prepare for it. The people who thrive in moments like this aren’t the ones who guess right about which industries will boom… they’re the ones who build the capacity to adapt, to learn, to push through hard things, and to work with others.
You can do that. You are already doing that every day at Acton. And when the world shifts in ways none of us can predict, you’ll be ready.”
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Happy Holidays! With much appreciation and anticipation - we look forward to the New Year with you!
Tobin & Martina
P.S.
Question of the Day: On a scale of 1-5, how connected do you feel to our Acton community now? And what can you do (or we do) that +1 your answer before the end of the school year?
P.S.S.
In terms of doing hard stuff and becoming a master learner, reading 500 words like this on a topic your Hero probably doesn’t fully understand (yet) is a great place to start.